


Charna

by MrProphet



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 17:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10701279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	1. Rites of Passage

Charna walked the Maiden's Path to the summit of Silver Peak, as all daughters of the tribe did on their sixteenth birthday. The rocks were sharp and they cut her bare feet, but as the moon rose behind Ivory Mountain, Charna crested the last rise and looked down into the pool.

It was the pool, and the light of the moon reflecting from it, that gave Silver Peak its name, but the sight of it was like nothing Charna could have imagined. It gleamed like a mirror,almost brighter than the moon itself, the surface of the water as flat and flawless as a sheet of pearl.

She slipped out of her maiden's gown of black and let it lie on the stones alongside the rotting remains of all the other gowns abandoned over the years. Naked, she walked into the pool, making waves that danced and sparkled in the moonlight. She stopped, three steps in, recited the Prayer of the Emperor's Blessing and then surged out into the deeper water. Past the lip of the pool it dropped off into a steep-sided bowl and she swam down towards the bottom of the bowl.

She reached out to touch the Maiden's Stone at the bottom of the pool, feeling its smooth-worn surface, its cool solidity and...

She recoiled as her hand brushed something hard and sharp; the blade of a long, heavy knife. Lungs aching, she struck out for the surface and hauled herself back onto the shore. She was shocked and appalled to find a weapon in the sacred pool, but not sure what to do about it. She had cut her finger, technically shedding blood on her Maiden Vigil; to handle the knife would be even worse.

Something moved on the edge of the vale, up at the lip of the Maiden's Path. Metal gleamed in the moonlight; a hard sliver of silver on a blade's edge.

Charna froze. She thought that she could probably run to the Woman's Path and scramble down ahead of the man. On the other hand, if he slipped away he might be here when another maiden came to the vale, and there was the knife in the pool behind her.

She turned and slipped silently into the water, swam down and seized the knife. Looking up, she saw the shadowy shape of the man, moving along the water's edge towards the Woman's Path.

Charna came from the pool like a striking sabreworm. She had no idea how strong or fast the man might be and so she threw everything into her first attack, racing from the shallows and driving the blade up into the base of the man's skull. He fell without a sound, his blood hot on Charna's hands.

She stood for a long moment, breathing hard.

“Most of them run.”

Charna turned, knife held out in front of her, but the figure who stood on the threshold of the Woman's Path would not have feared her skills. She wore armour like a god's, vast and bulky and humming with power, and His light shone from her like a beacon.

“Clean the blade and return it to the pool,” the woman commanded, and Charna could not think of disobeying.

“I have failed the test,” she noted, seeing that the woman still blocked the Woman's Path. “Must I return by the Maiden's Path?”

“That is for those who run,” the woman assured her. “You will walk my path, sister. I have clothes and boots for you, for your road leads to the Convent on Ivory Peak.”

“The Convent?” Charna whispered, awestruck.

“Yes, sister. You chose to fight here; now you will learn to do so in the Emperor's name.”


	2. Devotion

The Convent on Ivory Peak loomed in the legends of Elion Primaris as the peak itself, almost five miles high, loomed over the three plains. The Plainfolk of Elion looked to the peak as a symbol of the Emperor's authority, a pure white spike driving up from the heart of the planet, the ever-burning flame in the convent's great tower shining in token of the fire of faith which burns in the heart of every loyal servant of the Emperor.

Charna had grown up with that light as a constant in her life, a comforting spark on the horizon; however dark the hour, that light was there to remind her that the Emperor watched over all. That was before she walked the Maiden's Path and shed blood on the stones of Silver Peak, however; before Sister Andraesta found her and brought her to the convent.

Ten years after that night at the pool, Charna knelt in supplication and contemplation at the altar of the Emperor, watched over by the statues of the saints. With the dawn, she would take her final vows and become a fully-fledged Sister of Battle. She spoke her prayers clearly, sang her hymns, running the beads of the Imperial Rosary through her fingers, and thought back on the last ten years.

They had travelled on foot and the walk was torturous, Charna wearing the clothes that Andraesta had given her; the clothes that were too small and the boots that were too big. It was an act of will to keep up with the Sister Superior as she strode along the mountain passes; an act of faith. By the time they reached the convent her feet were rubbed raw and bloody and she looked to the great tower for the comforting light of the flame, only to see that, close to, that the flame was a white-hot Promethium blaze with no comfort to offer.

There was little comfort of any kind to be had during the next ten years, only the hard sympathy of the Infirmary sisters and the constant repetition of the articles and doctrines of the faith.

“The Emperor is the guide, the light and the path. We are His flame. We hone our bodies to His service, out minds to His will, our souls to His worship. We bring light to his servants and fire to his foes. Kill the xeno; purge the mutant; burn the heretic.”

She came to the convent having been prepared for a life of domesticity; for marriage and motherhood. Among the plainfolk, women were not hunters or fighters; they were not taken in the tithe to join the Emperor's army in the heavens. In the convent, women did everything; worked the fields, tended and slaughtered the herds, cooked, cleaned, maintained the equipment and prepared for their ultimate duty; battle.

When she arrived, Charna was asked to take a vow of silence. In the first year, she worked harder than she had ever worked in her life. In the second she worked harder than she would even have thought possible in her old life. After that, they called her a postulant and she began to train for combat.

After another three years most of her bones had been broken, both lungs had been punctured – once both at the same time – and some sixty percent of her organs had at one time or another been pierced, crushed or just plain collapsed due to shock and blood loss. The Hospitallers had taken her in each time and repaired the damage. Sometimes they also strengthened her bones with metal struts. They filled her body with drugs to numb pain, promote healing and reinforce muscle and then they taught her body to make those drugs for itself.

When she was not training her body, Charna studied, learning the codices of the Sisterhood: Military doctrine and history; the creed of the order and the rites of arming and armouring; the prayers of inner stillness and outer action. When she slept, the pipes of the hypnogogic organs whispered the same creeds into her ears.

Five years after she entered the convent, Charna was released from her vow of silence. On that day she was required to recite, from memory, every part of the creed, every prayer of the order. It took eleven hours to complete the recitation and with each prayer, each credo, she was granted another piece of armour, another weapon. 

Armed and armoured, she took her first vows and became a novice. That night, she boarded a ship which carried her into the stars and three months later, she entered battle for the first time. With a hymn on her lips and a prayer in her heart, she struck down the enemies of the Emperor. When an ork bullet splintered the plasteel of her armour and ripped through her biceps she spoke the prayer of endurance and forced her mind and body to ignore the pain.

For the next five years she was the first into any warzone. She studied and trained in the use of every doctrine, every weapon and every method of battle ever used by the Sisterhood. She learned the names and the stories of the saints and the history of the Sisterhood and she went into battle wearing that legacy as a mantle.

Charna lifted her head and looked up through the skylight. A single star shone in the darkness above her.

“Blessed Emperor,” she murmured, “grant me the grace and wisdom to know your enemies, and the strength to smite them in your name.”

The star twinkled brightly and for the first time in years and the last in her long, long life, Charna smiled.


End file.
